Huge Reservoirs of Water on Mars?

According to this article: "Mars is losing little water to space, according to new research, so much of its ancient abundance may still be hidden beneath the surface."

Earthlight

Earthlight is a very nice science fiction manga set on a Lunar settlement in the mid-21st century.

The year: 2068 A.D. The place: Earthlight, the first international moon colony. It's a domed complex of cold steel and carbon nanotubes, sterile and metallic, run by ironclad rules and regulations. Population: 228 adults—and 42 kids. Earthlight is a very expensive and controversial project, and life there is tense and difficult. Safety regulations must be obeyed to the letter. And the kids' parents are all under enormous pressure, which both contributes to the burden they place on their children and means they have very little family time in their schedules. So the kids must find their own way most of the time...

And sometimes, they get into trouble—as in the case of a recent catastrophic accident where five adults and three children died. So the U.N. hires Aaron Cole, a new administrator, to oversee Earthlight. Cole's wife, Leyla, is to establish and operate Earthlight Academy, the colony's first organized school—with their fourteen-year-old son, Damon, as one of the first students.

The high-tech, high-stress setting of Earthlight's lunar colony reflects and magnifies the problems of regular kids today. Like their parents, these teens must forge their own forms of survival and cooperation—if they're to succeed in this harsh new world.

Inflatable Habitats for Polar and Space Settlers

While the LUF has championed the settlement of the seas and space, there is still another frontier, which is the arctic and antarctic regions of our planet. There is a proposal to build inflatable habitat domes in Antarctica, which should prepare us to build similar habitats on other planetary surfaces such as Mars, Luna, or (perhaps) Titan.

Fab Revolution in Housing

If you are a reader of this blog, then you know that I am excited about fabbers as a technology. Now, engineers are working on robots that can fabricate houses. Using just concrete and gypsum, homes can be made quickly, cheaply, and inefficiently. This will be a very useful tool for space homesteading. A modified version of this machine can turn Martian or asteroidal material into inhabitable bases and can build much of the infrastructure for a lunar base, minus the life support materials.

Wireless Power

At the recent CES show, one of the most exciting new technologies was wireless power.

Powercast, of Ligonier, Pa., had an exhibit tucked away in a Philips exhibit hall of its technology, which can beam electrical power to devices three feet away. To recharge over the air, a device needs a tiny circuit board, about the size of a pinky toenail, that should only cost a few dollars.

Must Know Terms for the 21st Century

Over at the Sentient Developments blog, there is a list of Must know terms for today's intelligentsia.

Easy Quantum Mechanics

Here is a simple explanation of Quantum Mechanics for those who are computer literate.

Uses of the Open Source Model

Here is a nice blog entry on the ways people are using the open source model.

How To Appeal To Youth

To the dismay of space enthusiasts, recent studies have shown that young people tend to be more indifferent or even opposed to manned space exploration, even compared to older people. Young people were not as supportive of the new vision for space as older people were. This is an alarming trend, and NASA is working to reverse youth apathy towards space. Among their findings:

Even though the Dittmar surveys offer a bleak view, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin believes ventures to the moon and Mars will excite young people more than the current shuttle trips to low-Earth orbit.

“If we make it clear that the focus of the United States space program for the foreseeable future will be out there, will be beyond what we do now, I think you won't have any problem at all reacquiring the interest of young people,'' Griffin said in a recent interview.

Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, such as actors David Duchovny (“X-Files'') and Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: The Next Generation''); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.

Outside groups have offered ideas too, such as making it a priority to shape the right message about the next-generation Orion missions.

And NASA should take a hint from Hollywood, some suggested.

“The American public engages with issues through people, personalities, celebrities, whatever,'' said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a space advocacy group. “When you don't have that kind of personality, or face, or faces associated with your issue, it's a little bit harder for the public to connect.''

He said the agency could pick the crews for the moon and Mars trips earlier so the public can connect the faces with the far-off missions of the future.

“You can take advantage of these personalities and these stories about triumph over adversity to create heroes, if you will,'' said workshop leader Peggy Finarelli, a former NASA official who is now a researcher at George Mason University.

I belong to the 18-25 year old demographic, and I disagree with much of what is stated in the article. Using celebrities, Google Video, and YouTube will not cut it, IMO. Just because celebrities are endorsing space travel will not automatically make it click among youth. I don't remember the announcement that Lance Bass was trying to pay for a spaceflight rousing interest in young people for going to Mars. Also, a trip to space at the time costs millions, and would likely be seen among many young people as a "playground for the filthy rich." The reasons for the lack of interest are much deeper.

Consider this: the Boomers grew up with space being something very new. As humans had never left the atmosphere, the fact that men were now orbiting Earth, and later walking on Luna were very profound events. For the first time in history, people were able to look at photographs of the Earth as a blue/green sphere. Also during that time, there was much vision of a future of Mars and Lunar colonies, and people living and working in space. Even the Xers, born in the 1960s and 1970s, were around to see the major milestones, from Apollo, to Skylab, to the STS, and to the Challenger explosion. Space was still relatively new, and the theme of the era was making space travel routine. But of course, we know where that went.

Now, let's get to the Millennial generation, born in the 1980s and 1990s. It is rare to find a Millennial, born even in the early 1980s, who can remember the Challenger disaster. Shuttle flights every few months is something that we've been accustomed to all of our lives. There has not been much happening in space that would excite Millennials. Yeah, every several months, we launch about 3 - 7 people on the space shuttle just to travel a few hundred miles above the Earth's surface. The shuttle can't even make it to Geostationary Orbit, much less Luna. Many of us have been hearing about NASA plans to build a space station "Freedom", "Alpha", or "ISS". And look at where we are today. ISS is a total clusterf--k (excuse my French) of a project. Today, you can't really do anything exciting there. So why should we be excited about NASA starting a moon base? With the record of NASA since the cancellation of Apollo, why should we become interested in a vision that will probably not live up to the hype? If you were a space enthusiast, you might wonder whether we have anti-space people working at NASA.

Also, there is plenty of anti-space rhetoric going around. What is the logic of spending billions of dollars to send a couple of people into space when there are still people in poverty everywhere? Earlier this year, Katie Couric reflected a sentiment expressed by Jesse Jackson shortly after the manned Lunar langings, when she said "I can't help but wonder what all that money could do for people here on planet Earth". I mean, the Earth is warming. The polar ice caps are melting and sea levels will rise. AIDS is devastating much of the world, as are other plagues such as malaria. Billions have no access to clean water and find hardship even in obtaining food. Even in America, there are many impoverished people. So why spend billions of dollars on sending a few people into space every few months, when that money could be used to alleviate hunger here at home? That's a very convincing argument.

But us space enthusiasts know better. We know that space has the potential to help solve the problems we have here on Earth. But is this ever communicated to the public? I have never read anywhere outside a space-themed book or website about how space can be used to solve problems here on Earth. I have never heard, or heard of, anyone saying in public that space offers the opportunity for wealth beyond our wildest dreams, the opportunity for a much better environment, or the opportunity to solve our energy-shortage problems. Never. Is the media just blocking out these messages, or are the space enthusiasts not working hard enough to get the message out? We are constantly bombarded with messages of an impending energy crisis, that fossil fuels are running out and there is no known energy source able to provide the amount of energy that fossil fuels provides. When alternatives are spoken of, either it is terrestrial solar power or hydrogen. A lot of people would be astounded to learn that we've already found a solution to this crisis, and have known of it since the 1970s. Why is it that space solar power, lunar solar power, or even helium-3 (which is understandable since we don't even have fusion reactors yet) never get mentioned as viable alternatives, even though they provide the opportunity to provide surplus energy for more than 10 billion people? OTECs are also able to power the world, but this is never mentioned either.

If the 2004 and 2006 elections have proven one thing, it is that the Millennials tend to lean on the leftist/liberal side of the ideological spectrum. I myself am a liberal, and a leftist. As a result, space has to connect with the issues that concern left-wing politics. And given the benefits that space can offer, this should be the easiest thing in the world. Until we connect with the general public on how space can tackle our most dire problems here on Earth, we will have a hard time convincing people that space is worth the money. How many people even browse the science section of the bookstore? Many people will steer clear from it. Only a small fraction of the population has even heard of the books The Millennial Project, Mining the Sky, or The Case For Mars. It was books like these that turned me into a space enthusiast. And where is the vision for space? There is actually plenty of vision, but that vision is inaccessible to most people. John S. Lewis -- author of Mining The Sky -- decried the "lack of visionary leadership in recent years". Today, you don't see much of a future about space. Sure, we have Battlestar Galactica, but that does not present an inspiring vision of a space faring future. If you want to draw in a new generation, you have to inspire them. You have to connect space with their hopes, dreams, and aspirations of a better world and a better life for themselves. For some, this might mean mining materials on the Lunar surface and then fabricating the material into solar panels in orbit or on Luna that can provide unlimited energy for all. For others, it might mean power cheap and plentiful enough so that even an impoverished village in Ghana can improve their living conditions.

Another thing is that there needs to be more space related jobs. Those of us who are nerds and geeks will find much more opportunity creating software than working for NASA. There needs to be more employment in the space industry, and there needs to be a chance that they could go into space.

Interest in "New Space" (commercial) human spaceflight efforts such as the X-Prize flights of SpaceShip One is increasing, relative to the results of the previous study.

Efforts like this connect the youth to a possible space future. And if there are companies offering space flights, this means that one could potentially get a job engineering and constructing space vehicles and space infrastructure. And if the prices drop and more people have access to space, then the youth will become more interested. So the issue with space is that there is not enough communication to the masses about what a space faring future could entail for us. We need to get that message across. We need to tell everyone that we can solve our energy crisis by embarking on space travel. We need to let people know that the resources in space are practically infinite. And we need to let people know that space gives us an opportunity to return Earth to its natural beauty and splendor. We also need to, at every point, counter-act any message that states that space is useless. Next time Katie Couric or someone else talks publicly about the need to turn away from space, we as a community need to fill up their (e)mail boxes and voicemails with the truth. We much not allow anyone to spread ignorance about space without a hard fight.

Orion's Asteroid Architecture

Space.com has an article about Orion hardware for a human flight to an asteroid. I prefer sending humans to a NEO (preferably a CC type that contains plenty of volatile elements) over sending them to Luna or Mars.

“There are many asteroids that have very low relative velocities with respect to Earth,” Lu observed. Identifying an “ideal” NEO is one that’s both slow moving and comes close to Earth – sort of a match made in heaven.

“Those are easy targets,” Lu said. They wouldn’t require a lot of rocket oomph to rendezvous with, he said.

Since asteroids have very low gravity (you can actually jump with enough force to escape the gravty well altogether on many asteroids), not much fuel would be needed for a return trip back to Earth.

Burrows said that resource mining in the distant future is part of that learning process.

Distant future? Why leave asteroid mining to the distant future? Just what do they mean by "distant future" when they talk about a human mission to an asteroid in 2020? Why not start as soon as you get there? By 2020, fabbers should be cheap and small enough to easily bring on such a trip based upon what fabbers are able to do today.

Undersea Settlement

The goals of the LUF include not only space settlement, but also the settlement of the world's seas. Dennis Chamberland, the blogger at QuantumLimit.com, is writing a book about the settlement of the world's seas which is scheduled to be released at the end of the winter season. In the latest post about the book, Chamberland notes that many interesting developments have been occurring in the seas. Several companies are building undersea resorts. Increased undersea tourism is almost certain lead to the permanent settlement of the oceans, the mining of the oceanic floor, and eventually the rise of underwater cities.

Homebrew Space Community?

At The Speculist, there is a blog entry about the requirement of nanomanufacturing (or at least, fabbing), for the settlement of space.

"Industrial facilities" - would be prohibitively expensive with our present level of technology. The factory pictured below has hundreds of thousands of square feet - and that's just for one product. That kind of maufacturing just can't be duplicated on Mars.

Of course, many people disagree, as you can see from the comments in that post. I don't think that anyone would argue that such technologies will make things easier, though.

No one really knows how far away nanomanufacturing is. Fabbing, however, is already here. You can buy the parts for your own Fabber and build it for less than $3000. There are also many online-based manufacturers, such as eMachineshop. For those of us who are engineers (I am a student in the profession), we can start designing and perhaps even building the technologies that we will use in space. There is already one organization dedicated to this endeavor. OSCOMAK aims to build an open source repository on manufacturing techniques and blueprints for the technologies to build a space settlement. We can get started today.

Our Uninhabitable Earth

One of the main arguments against the settlement of space is that there is nothing there. They look at Luna, orbital space, and the planets and know that they are natively uninhabitable to humans. There is no breathable air on any of these worlds. Liquid water is practically impossible to come by. (Actually, NASA just stated that they discovered liquid water on Mars, but that's for a different blog entry.) There is no known life on these worlds. The temperatures on these worlds are either too hot (as it is on Venus and on the sunlit sides of Luna and Mercury), or too cold (everywhere else in the solar system). Why leave our "paradise" for some dead world? As was stated in the closing sentences of The Dark Side of the Moon, "Everything that is good can be found on Earth," so why leave it?

Is Earth really the paradise it seems? I think not. The truth of the matter is Earth is mostly uninhabitable to humans. This fact escapes most people both pro and anti space because we take our living conditions for granted. Humans have settled practically every piece of land on this planet, except for the ice caps. But as technology improves, even settlement on Antarctica (which would no doubt be like a space settlement, given the extreme cold) will become feasible.

I am writing this blog entry sitting in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2006, St. Louis experienced two major weather emergencies. Many many remember that last July, St. Louis was hit by two derecho events with winds surpassing 90 MPH amid a heat wave. The storm knocked power out for over 600,000 customers (over 1.1 million people) in the area for up to two weeks. Temperatures were around 100 F (with the heat index above 115 F) for several days after the storms. Several people were killed by the excessive heat in the absense of air conditioning. Just a few days ago, around the turn of December, St. Louis was hit by one of the worst ice storms in its history as 1 - 2 inches of sleet and freezing rain accumulated across the area, followed by a few inches of snow on top. Today, 6 days later, there is still over 100,000 customers in the St. Louis area without power, after peaking at 500,000, similar to July. Several days of cold weather (low temps in the teens and single digits at night) have killed several people whose power was knocked out. These temps were not even close to record territory for the St. Louis area (all time highest temp of 115 F and lowest temp of -22 F). These are temperatures that St. Louis experiences over the course of a normal summer or winter, but the lack of heating and air conditioning many homes uninhabitable.

The two major weather events in the same year in the same city has shown just how uninhabitable Earth really is. To illustrate this even more, we have to go very far back in history. Before the discovery of fire and before humans started wearing animal fur, humans were confined to the tropical regions of the planet. Especially in ice age conditions, and even during interglacial episodes similar to today, man could not survive beyond the tropics. For people living during this era of human history, most of the world was uninhabitable. North America, Europe, Asia (north of the Himalayas), most of South America, Australia, and even most of Africa were as uninhabitable as the Moon and Mars were 50 years ago. To these people, the little stripe of inhabitable land in Africa (and probably South Asia) was Eden, while every other place was no-man's land. Put these people in a place as far south as northern Florida today, and they would die off before that winter ended. In spite of Florida's reputation as a land of endless summer, they do get below freezing in the winter. Jacksonville in Florida even dipped to -2 F during the cold wave of 1899, and even Miami has seen subfreezing weather. In fact, there is no place in the contiguous US that does not experience life threatening cold from time to time, if you happen to be free of clothing. Even Nairobi in Kenya doesn't escape cold weather, where temps can fall to near freezing at night. Beyond temps, there are also unfriendly ecosystems. Desert is uninhabitable. Even the most primitive societies living in deserts are technologically advanced enough to live there. Where there are no edible plants, humans have to use weaponry to kill animals for food.

But humans have done the "impossible." With the discovery of fire, they were able to move away from Eden, and into the immediate surrounding areas where temperatures can drop below 50 F, and as low as freezing, at night. The invention of tools and weapons have greatly expanded the menu for humans (Mammoth steak), as did the fact that humans could now cook their food. The invention of fur-based clothing has made it possible for humans to survive even in the tundra. Humans have long inhabited Siberia, where temperatures regularly drop below -50 F at night, and can fall even as low as -90 F. For most people (including myself), that kind of cold is inconceivable. But the technology of using the fur of the animals that thrive in this kind of cold for clothing makes living there possible.

Humans have done more impossible things. Some of the first civilizations have sprung up in the hard desert regions. These people have taken rather desolate regions and turned them into rather green cities. The Nile Valley Civilizations of Egypt and Nubia have left magnificent Pyramids that stand to this day. Mesopotamia was another early civilization built between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East. Modern day Baghdad is located within what used to be Mesopotamia. These are all in major desert regions. The technology of irrigation allowed these people to grow large amounts of food locally, which led to the formation of urban regions. Irrigation has since been repeated around the world in other civilizations. Las Vegas and Phoenix are both built in uninhabitable deserts.

The vast majority of humans are living in uninhabitable regions of the world. In effect, we are settlers. For hundreds of thousands to even millions of years we have been a species that utilize technology to survive in places which are natively uninhabitable. We live in environmentally controlled conditions. Using clothing, we modify the air very close to our bodies. In the Sahara, clothing is normally used to reflect sunlight and to keep the air behind the cloth, and thus the body, cool. For most other places, clothing is used to keep warm air near our bodies, and to keep heat from escaping. In the regions of the world where artificial heat is required for the survival of humans, shelters are used to modify the air to a comfortable temperature. In the Arctic, fires burn inside Igloos to create comfortable temperatures, even if temperatures outside are -50 F. In European homes, fireplaces have long been used to provide an artificial environment that is survivable throughout the winter.

Space (as well as sea) settlement is simply the next step. When humans need to venture outside of their settlement, they will merely take their space suits as humans will need an artificial environment. Most of the time, though, humans will reside in buildings that create an artificial environment. Some of these will rotate to simulate gravity (until a replacement gravity generator can be invented). All will create breathable air, drinkable water, and food. By building an artificial environment, we can grow crops in the most of ideal conditions. Or, using today's cutting-edge technology, we can print our food in an ink-jet printer. We can recycle the water we use, and the air we breathe. We can recycle our own biological wastes.

Just as our ancestors turned hard desert into green cities, we can do the same in space. We can create an oasis on Luna. Like in our desert civilizations, water and crops (or the seeds of crops) will have to be imported. For our space settlements, air will also have to be imported. Asteroids, many of which are Near Earth Asteroids, can provide the life support materials we need. Like those humans who live in the cold regions of the planets, we will have to modify our air for survival, and we will have to keep that air from escaping our habitat. In orbit, our habitats can spin to create artificial gravity. We will be able to create even more ideal conditions than those found naturally on Earth.

Can "everything that is good" be found on Earth? Most of it. But what we think of as "good" can be created elsewhere. What about "what is bad"? Most of what we think of as "bad" can also be found on Earth. Everything "bad" that has happened to humans has by default happened on Earth. 75,000 years ago, a supervolcanic eruption and a sudden return to hard ice age conditions nearly killed off the human species. It's been over 1 million years since most humans have lived in their truly natural habitat. Human survival for at least that long has depended on the settlement of seemingly uninhabitable places. We have settled a planet that was mostly uninhabitable, and will do the same in space.

Nigeria's Second Satellite

In a previous entry, I talked about Nigeria's space program. Nigeria will release its second satellite in 2009. It is a large upgrade of the first satellite.

DIY Solar Power: The Killer App For Fabbers?

Today, Ghana is a of the poor nation Earth. The per capita income is only $2500, and the GDP is about $55 billion. Recently, MIT set up fab labs around the world, including Ghana. In the more developed regions of the world, people used these experimental labs to produce customized items for themselves. In the less developed regions, the people went to work on building technology that could very well improve their situation.

Engineers in Ghana are working on building solar power panels/cells using fabbers to bring cheap electricity to the masses. This could very well be the killer app for fabbers. There was recently an article in Wired about printable solar cells.

Entrepreneurs promise that soon solar-energized "power plastic" will radically extend the battery life of laptops and cell phones. Ultra-cheap printed solar cells will enable construction of huge power-generating facilities at a fraction of today's costs. And technologies to integrate solar power-generation capability into building materials will herald a new era of energy-efficient construction.

These technologies will soon be available commercially, according to the article. But how long will it take before you can print them on your fabber at home? Research are already working on this. When it becomes a reality, we can expect that people worldwide will start printing solar for many of their needs, whether they live in more developed or less developed regions of the world. This will make energy very cheap for most people, and will be almost as easy as downloading a PDF file and printing it on your printer. It will help to lessen the usage of fossil fuels even while giving a much better standard of living and quality of life to billions of poor people. It will be very useful on Luna, especially since Luna has the materials necessary in the regolith to make solar power collectors for a future Lunar base.

The Fab Revolution Has Begun!!

Some time ago, I wrote a series of blog entries about new revolutions in manufacturing. There have been three entries this far. The first one introduces the concept of fabbers. The second entry talks about how they can advance many of the goals of the LUF, and also talks more about how it can the open source movement can help with the development of fabbers, and the products they produce. In the third blog entry, I wrote about exponential fabrication, and how we can use it to easily fabricate megastructures (and soon, gigastructures and terrastructures).

Of course, such machines seem very futuristic to lots of people. In TMP, which was written in 1992, the universal fabricator is introduced, but as a 23rd century technology that is used by pioneers settling the Asteroid Belt. Gershenfeld shocked the world by building fab labs at MIT and around the world. Now, it seemed closer than ever. But it still seemed at least a decade off. But suddenly, in late 2006, the first fabber targeted for home use appeared. Introducing Fab@Home. On that website are the instructions for building your own fabber. In historic time, this is equivalent to the release of the first personal computers in the 1970s and the release of open source Unix clones in the 1990s. From here and on, we should expect fabbers and the products created by fabbers to continuously improve.

The Fate of Gaia

The idea that every living thing on Earth functions as a single organism is very interesting to me. The Gaian Hypothesis came along during th 1970s. It is no question that the first photographs of Earth from space has helped to inspire that theory. That everything that humanity had ever experienced happened on a blue sphere that could now fit within a single picture. Before it, Earth was perceived as a huge world. But with the photograph of Earth from space, it became clear to many people how small, and how vulnerable the Earth was. Some celestial event could wipe out the entire planet.

As people looked at growing environmental problems, many have taken to blaming humanity for everything that is currently wrong on the planet. As the human population grew and our thirst for energy and materials grew along with it, many came to the conclusion that humans were an evil and destructive species. They concluded that humans were a cancer on the planet. The only way to save Earth was to remove most of the Earth's population, return to a pre-industrial (or primitive) way of life, or to become extinct.

How depressing. And people wonder why people have become cynical and nihilistic. As much as I like the Gaian Hypothesis, I don't like the conclusions many have drawn from it. I like to take a different view of the matter, one that was hinted at by the author of The Millennial Project, and one expressed by many other space enthusiasts and space activists. What if humans were evolved for a purpose? As much destruction as we have caused, Gaia might have evolved humanity to become agents of its creation. If Gaia is a living organism, then we should expect that it will do what all organisms do. Gaia will die whether or not humans are the cause of its demise. It may happen tomorrow, or maybe not for billions of years. The only way to "escape" it is to reproduce. That is the idea of the Pregnent Mother Earth metaphor. By evolving an intelligent and "handy" species, Gaia has evolved a reproduction system. As it stands, humanity is the only species with the ability to travel from Earth and into space, and is thus the only means for the transmission of life into space.

In the Pregnant Earth metaphor, Gaia is increasingly sick because she is pregnant with humans. As David Buth explains it,

• space colonies are like children (a fetus right now)

• the biosphere is like a pregnant woman

• humanity is like the biosphere's reproductive system

• A pregnant woman experiences unsustainable growth in her abdomen, specifically in the reproductive organs. Imagine how frightening this would be if you didn't know about pregnancy. Similarly, the Earth is experiencing unsustainable growth of the human population -- which in our metaphor is Mother Earth's reproductive system.

• A pregnant woman experiences changes in her body chemistry. Similarly, the biosphere is experiencing changes in air and water chemistry as a result of man-made pollution.

• Pregnancy and birth, particularly before the advent of modern medicine, can be a very dangerous time for a woman. Death of the mother and/or the child was once quite common. Similarly, nuclear weapons, pollution, and other problems threaten civilization (although the biosphere has survived much worse).

• A wise woman treats her body with extra care during pregnancy -- eating well, getting plenty of sleep, avoiding drugs, and seeking appropriate medical attention. The implications for ourselves are obvious, especially since that there are no experienced doctors or midwives.

Pregnancy has been dangerous in the past, and can still be dangerous today. There have been four outcomes.

In the first one, the mother dies giving birth while the baby survives. The pregnancy was too much for the mother. The child, however, is able to survive the trauma of birth. This is the scenario in which Gaia experiences a catastrophe and dies (or at least experiences a major global extinction event equivalent to the one which killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) and the surviving humans settle space, while bring life from Earth into space. Many people have referred to this as the "disposable earth policy." That just because we can settle space, we can do whatever we want to Gaia.

The second outcome is the one in which the the baby dies while the mother survives. There was a miscarriage in which either humans destroyed themselves (through pollution and war) while Gaia survives, or Gaia killed humanity herself when natural disaster (such as the Toba eruption with its near extinction of humanity 75,000 years ago) struck. Either way, human civilization ends, billions die, and the remaining humans revert to primitive living conditions, becoming hunter-gatherers, if they don't become extinct.

In the third outcome, both the mother and the baby don't make it. A massive extinction sweeps across the planet, at least on par with the K/T extinction 65 million years ago that killed the dinosaurs. If humans don't go the way of the dinosaurs, theirs numbers will dwindle until there are perhaps only thousands left. Maybe, Gaia merely got too sick. Or, perhaps, some outside event killed the mother and baby. In this scenario, a stray bullet strikes and kills a pregnant woman. This is also the asteroidal/cometary doomsday scenario.

In the fourth outcome both the mother and baby surviving and thriving. In this scenario, Gaia is healed. Using technology wisely, Gaia is restored to full health while and after giving birth. Technology also enables humanity to enjoy a high standard of living and high quality of live on Earth. Humanity is traveling in space and is settling the solar system. Humans bring Earth life with them into space. Like a huge family, Gaia and her offspring all protect each other from harm, providing comfort to each.

The fourth scenario is by far the best. It is a future that we can definitely still have. A healthy Earth, and her healthy offspring. Settlements in orbit will be the first of her children, with bubbles containing living matter (humans, plants, animals) inside them. Lunar settlements will come next, also with bubbles of life inside of them. Asteroids and comets will be turned into living matter themselves through mining and through settlement in bubbles of life. The outer planets and their moons will host the offspring of Gaia. Gaia will give birth to Aphrodite and Ares with the terraformation of Venus and Mars. Perhaps, humans will enhance their bodies (and other life forms) to live in harsh non-terrestrial conditions.

Humans, realizing that they are perhaps the only ones capable of saving Earth and helping her reproduce, accept a new responsibility to all life. Humans have decided to protect the lifeforms on this planet. They have decided to help life thrive everywhere possible. There are now turtles living in space habitats on the Moon. There are forests on a terraformed Mars. There are fish and Dolphins swimming in the newly formed seas of Venus. There are bears and birds living in closed ecosystem bubbles 50 AU from the Earth in some large habitat in a Kuiper Belt settlement made up of several comets. And some of these life bubbles are moving away from the solar system, and towards the stars. This is the future I want. One with a healthy Earth, and an expanding human presence in space, extending the frontiers for the existence of life.

Nigeria's Space Program

Ever since man walked on the moon around 1970, people have been asking the question, "Why spend all of this money on space when there are too many problems to solve here at home and too many poor people in this nation?" Even though the money NASA spends is less than 1% of the national budget, this is still far too large for many people.

But try telling that to Nigerians. Nigeria is one of the poorest in the world, with a per capita income of only $1400/year. To many people, the thought of Nigeria building a space program was madness. They simply can't afford it, most people believed. Or, says others, the leaders merely wanted to use nationalism to become reelected.

In 2003, Nigeria launched a satellite into orbit to monitor agriculture and potential mining places, and it is planning more satellites. Nigeria wants to fly a man into space by 2025. While the launch in 2003 was a source of national pride, many were critical of the launch for the reasons mentioned above. So are Nigerians making a bad move?

No. Nigerians have an eye on their long term future. Looking back at the US space program, there were many important technological spinoffs. Modern computing technology is based upon many of the advances in microprocessor technology that Apollo was built on. Velcro came from the space program. Space is very important for monitoring Earth. We use it to monitor and forecast weather, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, potential mining spots, etc. Without satellite technology, weather forecasting would be much, much more difficult than it is today. As high as the death toll from Hurricane Katrina was, imagine if we didn't have space technology. Imagine if the hurricane was a total surprise for those affected by the storm. Weather satellites saved perhaps tens of thousands of people in the area ravaged by the storm. Satellite technology even helped with rescue operations in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.

Only 1% of Nigerians has access to telephone lines. This lack of communications infrastructure is part of what keeps Nigeria impoverished. But putting a communications satellite into orbit will provide the entire nation with wireless communications, include available broadband Internet, which Nigerians hope to sell for revenue. As successful and profitable as cell phones have proven in African nations, broadband Internet could generate a huge economic stimulus to an economy that really needs it. These technologies could help Nigeria develop economically, and to alleviate poverty. The NASRDA explains their objectives for leapfrogging in their mission statement.

NASA - Moonquakes

NASA - Moonquakes: "NASA astronauts are going back to the moon and when they get there they may need quake-proof housing.
That's the surprising conclusion of Clive R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame after he and a team of 15 other planetary scientists reexamined Apollo data from the 1970s. 'The moon is seismically active,' he told a gathering of scientists at NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting in League City, Texas, last October."

This reminds me of an idea I've had for a while. I would like to see a network of nodes that handle related communication, navigation, and information tasks. It links well with the MUOL concept of building an automated infrastructure.

Each node would have a space based wireless internet router making communications possible between nodes. By deploying nodes in orbit around a location (like a moon or planet), constant communications may be maintained. All local satellites can then use these nodes for system wide communications that do not rely on line of sight links to a distant radio telescope on Earth.

Additionally, select nodes can act as a Celestial Positioning System (CPS) with plug in units that transmit position and timing information. The CPS would allow greater navigational control of future automated and manned missions.

Space and local weather plugins would monitor local weather conditions (i.e. dust storms and glaciation on Mars or eruptions on Io) as well as space weather conditions (background cosmic radiation, solar flare activity, Jupiter's magnetosphere, etc.) that may affect the local scene. This ties in with the above article by including land based seismic recorders as part of the network.

The network would continue the current work of mapping and surveying territories in ever greater detail. New sensors units delivered to MUOL nodes would tell new stories about the nature and history of the local environment.

MUOL and non-MUOL not in this network can use the net as client nodes. This gives each client all the capabilities of the network expanding it's own possiblilites. This includes potential robotic explorers, surveyors, miners, constructors, and factories. If alerts come up or suppliers fail, the clients can react appropriately to their situations.

The network could also provide data storage and backup facilities incase client nodes fail or lose contact with the network. The network would also act as servers to make this data available to users back on Earth.

As this MUOL network builds, automated missions to networked locations should become more reliable. More data can be collected and processed and shipped back to Earth. By the time humans arrive to a networked location, the environment will be very well understood and have a usable communication, navigation, and information network in place.

See also:
The Importance of Establishing a Global Lunar Seismic Network. Clive R. Neal [PDF]
MUOL Eric Hunting

Why Overpopulation is Not a Problem

Ever since the 1960s, the issue of overpopulation has been a hotly debated topic. Overpopulation, however, might not be as big of a problem as it seemed at the time.

Accelerating Future has written another blog post that deals with this issue. As the population of the US surpasses 300 million, many are worried that the US will not be able to hold many more people. This is one of the arguments being used against immigration. Never mind that China, which is of similar area to the US, holds 4 times as many people. But how uncrowded is the US? It is often said that all of the world's people could fit on a very small island. But then again, the issue of overpopulation is not about real population density, but rather whether there are enough resources to go around. Is there enough farming space to feed the world? Here's what Michael Anissimov had to say:

So it turns out that if 5% of the United States were converted into urban area with a population density of 6,000/km², and 45% were converted into suburban area with a population density of 2,000/km², with the remaining 50% left for rural area, parks, and farms, there would be enough room for 3 billion in the urban areas, and 9 billion in the suburban areas, for a total population of 12 billion. This is in the US alone. This scheme could be extended to the other countries and continents for a total population of around 100 billion. Everything between the Arctic and Antarctic circles are potential targets for colonization. This is about 130,000,000 km² of land area (the circumpolar regions have about 20,000,000 km² of land).

12 billion people in the US? That's a lot of people. To do this, the five major obstables to this are

• colonizing the deserts
• colonizing the highlands
• providing energy
• providing food
• disposal of waste

In the blog entry, he sets forth many solutions to these problems, so be sure to read it. During the 1970s, it was believed that the Earth had a carrying capacity of about 10 billion people. With the advances in science and technology at this time, we now know that the number could be much, much higher.